Charity supporters update their Wills at 10,000 feet!

As part of Remember a Charity in your Will Week, a group of six pensioners decided to take to the skies to re-sign their Wills before sky diving from 10,000 feet. The stunt was just one of the activities to mark the annual awareness week which took place between 7-13 September and is designed to help the charity sector by encouraging more people to leave a gift to a good cause in their legacy.

This is the sixth year that the campaign has been running and follows on from its most successful year in 2014 which saw the campaign grow to over 150 charities and receive the backing of some of the UK’s biggest businesses and partners, including the likes of the Cabinet Office, Legal & General and The Law Society. The campaign has generated a noticeable increase in the percentage of people leaving a charitable legacy in their Will, with the number of good causes that benefitted increasing from 5.1% in 2000 to 7.3% in 2013.

Speaking about this increase, director of Remember a Charity, Rob Cope commented: “Remember a Charity Week has grown year-on-year and we hope 2015 sees our message continue to reach new audiences. Legacy income is currently worth more than £2bn a year in the UK. If we can grow the sector by just 4%, we could potentially raise an extra £1bn for UK charities. That’s why our mission is to help people realise what a legendary act leaving a gift to charity is and the scale of difference it can make to some of our favourite good causes.”

As we have seen from recent news stories, three quarters of Britons regularly donate to various charities, yet only 7.3% currently include a charity when writing their Will. Charitable gifts in Wills are responsible for generating more than £2 billion each year - the equivalent of 19 Comic Reliefs – and act as the financial foundation for many of our most loved charities.

What are your opinions on these statistics? Have you ever got involved in Remember a Charity in your Will Week?